The whole issue of Bitcoin mining has become hot news in recent weeks. Elon Musk was at the centre of it all, as he announced (via Twitter of course) that Tesla would no longer accept payments in Bitcoin due to the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining. The crypto scene has been blasting Musk for Fudding up the place as part of an ongoing campaign of destabilisation. This isn't yet another article about that though. What I've been thinking about is the essential role that minerals from Africa and elsewhere play in Bitcoin mining. If the ready supply of such minerals were hindered, Bitcoin mining and other processes involved in blockchain and cryptocurrency would probably become prohibitively expensive.
Of course, this isn't something unique to the crypto space. Minerals found in the Democratic Republic of Congo are essential for basically everything. As researcher Siddharth Kara puts it:
"cobalt is found in every lithium-ion rechargeable battery on the planet – from smartphones to tablets to laptops to electric vehicles. It is also used to fashion superalloys to manufacture jet engines, gas turbines and magnetic steel. You cannot send an email, check social media, drive an electric car or fly home for the holidays without using this cobalt."
It shouldn't surprise you to hear that the people of Congo are not enjoying the wealth that they're helping to create. Not only that, but the world's rapacious appetite for her minerals has helped fuel decades of violence and suffering there. This is nothing new for the people of Congo though. A century ago, 10 million people (half of the country's population of the time) were killed amidst Belgium's rubber extraction frenzy in Congo. Belgium was seeking to capitalise on that era's great hot new thing - mass production of motor cars. Fast forward a century, and it's again cars fuelling the current frenzy, this time electric ones - bringing us back to Mr Musk.
In an effort to recoup some of the wealth, the government of the D.R.C. has introduced a new mining code that requires increased taxes from the corporations that extract minerals. Unsurprisingly, the corporations have bitterly complained. And returning to my earlier point about the D.R.C. powering blockchain - several mining giants that extract Congo's minerals have committed to using blockchain-based tools to track the minerals they source. Reuters reports:
"Miners and carmakers, under pressure to show electric vehicle batteries are sourced responsibly, are exploring the usefulness of blockchain - a digital platform for recording and verifying transactions that is shared across a network of computers - to improve scrutiny of supply chains and show sourcing does not rely on conflict minerals or child labour.
Umicore, Glencore, China Molybdenum Co (CMOC) (603993.SS) and Eurasian Resources Group (ERG) will pilot blockchain technology Re|Source until the end of 2021 and expect to roll it out in 2022."
This isn't going to magically transform things, but we should keep an eye on this.
